


Siren Song - Part I

by electricshoebox



Series: There in Black and White [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Developing Relationship, Gang Violence, M/M, Night Club Singer Deacon, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Post-Break Up, Private Investigator MacCready, Private Investigators, Smoking, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29404974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/pseuds/electricshoebox
Summary: MacCready stopped asking, after a while, telling himself it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know who Deacon was. It wasn’t exactly like he had a wholesome story of his own to tell, and it wasn’t like they were taking a run at the altar, here. They had their laughs and they had their drinks and they always went back to MacCready’s stuffy shoebox of an apartment, and that was all it needed to be.Three months after he thought they said goodbye forever, newly-minted private investigator R. J. MacCready returns to the Third Rail Club, and sees night club singer Deacon again. It's strictly business. If he says it enough, he might even believe it.The DeaCready Noir-Inspired AU no one asked for.
Relationships: Deacon/Robert Joseph MacCready
Series: There in Black and White [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160171
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	Siren Song - Part I

**Author's Note:**

> So, listen. Sometimes, you're stuck in your bedroom quarantining and you have very literally nothing else to do, and you see a Fluffy February prompt for "Playing an instrument or singing" and you go into a fugue state and you come out with an entire noir-inspired AU for your OTP. To be fair, Fallout 4 is heavily noir-inspired in places already, so this wasn't really a stretch, but... look maybe I just wanted to put the boys in fancy clothes and give Deacon a stage to sing on. I do want to emphasize this is noir-inspired. I took the roles and the aesthetic and ran, but this isn't necessarily super faithful to noir as a whole. Anyway, this went kind of off the rails so I don't think it'll count for Fluffy February anymore, but I still had fun with the prompt and I hope you all enjoy it too. 
> 
> Beta'd as always by the indomitable **serenityfails**.
> 
> Warnings: Non-graphic mentions of gang/mob violence, plenty of drinking and smoking throughout

MacCready pulls the last of his cigarette to his lips as he reaches the end of the block. Ahead of him, the sidewalk’s lit a neon red that catches on the puddles left by the afternoon rainstorm. He doesn’t need to see the sign to know what it says. He closes his eyes for a moment, holding the smoke in his lungs. Then he breathes out, and the cigarette hits the pavement and crumples beneath his shoe. He steps off the corner as he looks to his left, and leaves the smoke and ash behind him. 

He wasn’t sure he’d ever step onto this street again. He’d thought about the last night he did every night since, about the door he slammed that didn’t open behind him, the voice that didn’t call to stop him, and the way the neon blurred through the taxi’s back window as the rain began to pour. 

He’d almost told Valentine no. He’d looked up sharply at the name of the club, startling out of his lean and almost knocking over the lamp on the edge of the card table he’d been using as a desk. Valentine’s electric eyes had fixed on him as he caught it by the shade. 

“You wanna check the lead at the Diamond City mayor’s office instead?” 

And — no, hell no. That place was crawling with cops, and even if he’d chosen the straight-and-narrow now, even if putting “P. I.” next to his name left him bare inches from being one of them, that’s a door he’s not about to darken. Not with his past. 

“Didn’t figure,” Valentine says, when MacCready had just righted the lamp instead of answering. 

“But why the club?” MacCready finally asked, like they didn’t both know the answer. The look Nick leveled him said as much. 

“Because we’re working on a kidnapping, Mac.” He’d said it as slow and deliberate as MacCready deserved. 

Kidnappings meant three things in a town like Goodneighbor, so close to the big city it’s practically clinging to the coattails. One, that the right word for it was “murder” and it was a waiting game before the cops found a body, and a jealous husband or an angry girlfriend to go along with it. Two, it was someone who found themselves in the wrong part of the town. Accidentally, and it meant Raiders, a street gang of leathered-up bottom-feeders that liked to play wolf around lost little rabbits. On purpose, and it meant Gunners, who were Raiders in three-piece suits that put their money in important pockets rather than throwing it at liquor shops and adult bookstores. MacCready knew that one all too well, having once been one of them. If the police had washed their hands of the case, then that definitely meant Gunners, or it meant what’s behind door number three: the Institute. The Boogieman of the Commonwealth. The one that wasn’t supposed to exist. Either way, it didn’t take a detective like Nick or a defector like MacCready to know the fastest way to catch a rumor like that was to get a barstool at the Third Rail. 

“This gonna put you in danger?” Valentine’s voice had leveled off into sincerity. MacCready hated it instantly.

“I can handle myself.”

“Not what I asked.” 

MacCready had sighed and gone fumbling into his pocket for a cigarette, just to keep his hands busy. “It’s fine.” 

It was. The Gunners got the message months ago. None of them had tried sniffing around since. 

Valentine had sat back, that glowing gaze too sharp, the fans under his chassis whirring softly. MacCready’s still getting used to it. 

“All right. Is it gonna hurt our chances, then?” 

He’d changed course so fast MacCready almost dropped the cigarette mid-lift. 

“No,” MacCready said once he got the thing between his teeth and lit it. He took a drag. “No, he wouldn’t — _they_ wouldn’t — no.” 

No matter what kind of welcome he’d be staring down the barrel of when he got there — no matter who does or doesn’t want to see him — if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that they won’t shut the door in his face. Not when they hear why he’s there. 

So, that had been that. Valentine had taken off the training wheels weeks ago, as far as questioning leads and tailing suspects went. That didn’t put MacCready’s name on the door quite yet, not after three months, but he knew the basics. Wasn’t that far off from what he’d been doing for the Gunners. He just kept his gun in its holster most of the time, these days. 

The sidewalk’s already crowded when MacCready makes it up the block. Sparkling dresses and crisp dark suits stand behind a bobbing velvet rope. Smoke drifts up into the night from cigarette holders perched in silk-gloved hands. Oxfords and high heels click on the damp concrete, impatient. And, above it all, the Third Rail Club sign pulses red, and the gold and green three car train chugs forward on an endless neon loop beneath it. MacCready knows the scene by heart. The taste of smoke sours in his throat, and his stomach starts to burn. 

As it turns out, the Third Rail hasn’t forgotten him, either. At the head of the rope line stands a square-jawed, square-fisted bouncer in a standard black suit, and his eyes snap to MacCready the moment MacCready gets close. MacCready might’ve traded his suit for a trenchcoat and a new fedora, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The bouncer cracks a smile and folds his arms. “Robert Joseph MacCready.” 

“Hiya, Ham,” MacCready says, lifting his head a little to let the light hit his eyes under the brim of his hat. “Am I in trouble already?” 

“That depends, you got any reason to be?” 

“Night’s young,” MacCready says, the corner of his mouth turning up. Ham chuckles and offers his hand, giving MacCready’s a firm shake. MacCready aims for casual when he pulls away and says, “Is the Racket playing tonight?” 

The curve of Ham’s smile says he missed the mark. “It’s Friday night, ain’t it?” 

MacCready lets out a breath of a laugh, too thin. He can feel the blonde curls at the front of the line giving him the stink eye. He tries his luck anyway. “Got a barstool open for an old friend?” 

“Oh, sure, now he remembers we’re friends,” Ham says. He looks MacCready over and then throws his thumb over his shoulder. “Go on.” 

“Thanks, Ham. Owe you drink?” MacCready says as he passes, and Blonde Curls starts to splutter. 

“Like you’ll ever come around when I can drink it. Yeah, yeah, all right, lady, keep your mink on—”

Brass music and loud voices hit him like a wave on the beach as he steps in the door. It’s a full house — every round little table and red-cushioned chair taken. It’s a crowd as dolled up and slicked back and polished to shine as the one waiting outside. But MacCready knows from months of haunting the corner of it that the bar always has a seat open for owner Hancock’s friends. And you don’t get to haunt that corner that long without becoming one of those friends, though it had taken a lot of talking and more than a little help from the cigarette girl, Daisy, an old friend from… an old life. 

He doesn’t see her milling through the crowd as he slips up onto the familiar corner stool. Maybe that’s for the best. He always meant to pick up the phone, give her a ring, tell her… something. But every time he reached for the receiver, he’d dropped it back down again. 

Usually it’s Charlie working the bar, old Whitechapel himself, but tonight it’s a dark-haired woman MacCready doesn’t recognize. Hancock must be having a private party of his own in the back. He wouldn’t trust anyone but Charlie to wrangle those. MacCready tells the woman to bring him a whiskey on the rocks — he’s technically on the clock, but he’s not doing this dry. 

He looks out over the club as he waits. It’s themed, unsurprisingly, after an old train station. It’s got subway lights dimmed on the walls and wide, rounded openings between the bar and the ballroom with clearance signs overhead, like subway tunnels. A mosaic tile wall above the booths flanking the bar makes a blue arrow pointing into the ballroom with the words “Diamond City, Inbound” at its center. A stylized map of the actual subway system hangs on the wall to the left of the arrow. The stage is also framed to look like it’s jutting out of the mouth of a tunnel, with flourishes and gold-painted accents the bar wears, too. It’s just rough enough around the edges to make it fashionable. 

It didn’t start out with the velvet rope rule. Hancock told him that, months back. It started out taking all comers, like most of the rest of Goodneighbor. Even now, the black tie treatment isn’t a requirement, and they don’t turn away the patched-jacket drifters just looking for somewhere to wilt until last call. They don’t turn away some of the shadier characters, either, long as they’re freelance or on Hancock’s payroll. No, the velvet rope is mostly for show, but it’s meant to keep the gangs out, after they started nudging in too close on Hancock’s territory. They only got really strict about it after the Winlock and Barnes incident, though. 

MacCready left the Gunners when he finally got wind of their real business. Sickos would sell anyone they caught in their loan schemes into their seedy clubs or to their high roller patrons, or they’d just force their debtors into work when the strong-arm treatment didn’t squeeze out enough. Men, women, children, it didn’t matter. They’d take whole families on one parent’s mistake. 

MacCready had done a lot of things in his life that might get some pearls clutched, and definitely kept him giving the cops a wide berth. But even he had limits. Besides, he’d gotten tired of playing errand boy for those two middle-management dicks, even if the money was good. 

He thought he’d made a clean break. Sure, he took a few right hooks for it, and a lot of crap, but he thought he’d gotten out. Then Winlock and Barnes figured out where he’d claimed sanctuary, and they’d scammed Ham with fake I.D.s and iron-pressed suits and sat down right next to MacCready at the bar. Charlie gave them the boot, but not before they got in a parting threat. And a parting bruise.

Well, they’re keeping the fish company at the bottom of the Charles, now. Turned out Hancock needed to send a message, and MacCready needed the Gunners off his back. A few jobs in exchange made up the difference, and left MacCready with friends in high places and a whole new world of options. Just… not as many as he thought, in the end. 

He nurses his whiskey while Magnolia, the other resident songbird, finishes her set. She’s a vision in red tonight, right up to her lips, and she’s got the dance floor full. She always did know how to work a crowd. She alternates the stage with the Racket on weekends, and they trade off nights during the week. 

Her last song ends in applause loud enough to drown the din of conversation for a minute. MacCready claps along with them. She bows and winks and flashes that thousand dollar smile while she buys a ten minute break and gets the curtain closed. Dancers flood back off the floor to their candlelit tables, and voices take up the space the music leaves. Two minutes later, Magnolia rounds the bar from the back, and when her gaze lands on MacCready, she smiles.

“Well, are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is that R. J. MacCready at the end of my bar?” she says, tilting her head so he can take off his hat and plant a kiss on her cheek.

He runs a hand over the slick in his hair, smoothing it. “You sound good, Mags.” 

“You got some nerve calling me that when it’s been months since I had a single word from you.” She gives him a pouty frown that’s more worry than anger as she takes the stool at his side. 

“Well, I’m here to settle the debt,” MacCready says, taking another sip of whiskey. “I always square my ledger, don’t I?” 

“Oh, honey,” she says, her smile too soft at the edges. She nods her thanks as the bartender sets a martini at her elbow. “We both know you’re not here for me.” 

He purses his lips. His eyes jump to the stage, and then away, that churning feeling rolling through his stomach again. The silence answers for him, whether he wants it to or not. He almost regrets leaving his hat on the bar, and wonders if it’s too obvious to try and tug it back on now. Finally, he says, “I came here on business, actually. Uh, new business. I’m — working with Valentine, now.” 

Magnolia smiles over the rim of her glass. “Nicky’s good people.” Her eyes flick down over him, then back up, lashes moving like a butterfly’s wing. “Always did like a hopeless case.” 

MacCready frowns at her. She laughs and takes another drink. “So, R. J. MacCready, private eye?” 

“Something like that. Ain’t got it in writing yet, but… yeah.”

Another soft smile. “It suits you.” 

“We’ll see.”

“No, it does. It’s good work,” she says. She runs her finger over the lip of the glass. “You know, you had us worried, disappearing like that.” 

“I—” MacCready’s frown deepens. He looks out at the stage again. “You know what happened?”

She presses a cool hand to his wrist. “Those dressing room doors are pretty flimsy, honey.” 

MacCready sighs. He chokes down the last of his whiskey, letting the ice rattle in the glass. He flicks his fingers at the bartender to signal for another. 

“I don’t know the details,” she offers as he slumps. “He doesn’t — he never talked about it, after. Just looked — well, kind of like you do now. Not sure when he gave up watching the door.” 

That makes something in MacCready’s chest squeeze tight enough to hurt. The bartender sets his drink down in the nick of time, and he swallows down a third of it in a single gulp. 

Magnolia’s hand tightens on his wrist. “Hey, take it easy. You already tried doing this drunk, and it didn’t go well.” 

She’s right, but it stings, and he scowls as he sets the glass back on its napkin. She pats the back of his hand, unphased, and lets him go. Her eyes dart up to the steel-rimmed clock over the bar. She takes a heavy sip of her martini and then stands, towering over him with those long legs of hers. “Gina, put his drinks on my tab.” 

The bartender nods, and Magnolia turns her smile on MacCready. “It’s good to see you, honey. Don’t be a stranger.” She leans closer. “And for what it’s worth? I think you could make an honest man out of him yet.” 

MacCready scoffs quietly. “Don’t think there’s anyone good enough for that job.” 

“Never known you to give up so easily.” She gives him a look and then saunters away, leaving the half-finished martini where it sits. Moments later, she’s back on stage, wine-red curtain at her back and spotlight in her eyes. When the applause dies down, she croons, “All right, everyone, strap your dancing shoes back on and keep that warm welcome going for Deacon and the Racket!” 

The curtain sweeps back as she walks back off stage, the bandstand swelling to life. He recognizes some of the faces. Glory, Drummer Boy, Tinker Tom. The crowd thinks the names are gimmicks. MacCready knows better. Then, before MacCready can brace himself, there he is, Deacon himself, spinning up to the microphone with a flourish so familiar it makes MacCready’s ribs ache. 

He’s got a white blazer on tonight, with black lapels that match his black slacks. He’s put on the pompadour wig he favors in public. And then, it’s down to the staples: black bowtie at his throat, black sunglasses glinting in the light, and a red rose pinned to his breast pocket. 

And that’s when MacCready’s throat goes dry. 

He’d worn a yellow one from the first time MacCready saw him sing. Then, just a bare few weeks before… well, before the last time MacCready was here, he’d switched to red. 

“What’s with the change?” MacCready had asked one night after Deacon’s set, nodding to the flower as Deacon sat down next to him. 

Deacon’s usually good at keeping his face in check. He has the kind of control that makes his smiles calculated, when other people can see them. But that night, MacCready had surprised him. He knows it, because for one brief moment, that surprise flickered across Deacon’s face, nudged his eyebrows up over his sunglasses, and left his mouth slack. Then, as quickly as it had come, it vanished again under a hastily-drawn smile. “Noticed that, did you?”

“‘Course I noticed,” MacCready had said, making Deacon’s smile turn a little secretive, and a little soft. 

“Just thought it looked better,” was all he offered.

A couple months after, MacCready was listening to Valentine talk to an older woman in the floral-print parlor of a mansion on the edge of the city. Something about a missing daughter. She had a book on the coffee table, _The Language of Flowers_ , and she’d let MacCready flip through it. When he landed on the page for roses, he’d barely kept from throwing the book out the window. He’d set it calmly back down on the table and excused himself to her powder room. And then he’d nearly sent his fist through the mirror when the soap in the dish hit his nose, reeking of roses. 

Deacon always did prefer his codes.

He looks as good as he always does on stage, shifting his weight foot to wing-tipped foot in time with Drummer Boy’s snare. He waits out the booming intro with that spit-shined performer’s grin of his, looking out into the crowd as they gather on the dance floor below him. And on the right trill from Glory’s trumpet, he leans in. 

Magnolia has a voice like a violin, all smooth scales and vaulting high notes that can bounce through the swing numbers and slide through the slow dances, and never loses that melancholy note at its core. But Deacon? Deacon has a voice like Glory’s trumpet. It fills the room, loud and bright and full, leaping between notes like he’s dancing up the octave and back down again. It’s the kind of voice that makes everyone else want to dance, too. But it’s also the kind of voice that sinks into a ballad the same way he sank down into the sheets the first time he let MacCready take him home: warm, pliable, open. Beautiful. It’s the kind of voice that could break your heart, if you let it.

MacCready wishes he didn’t remember that first night so clearly. It’d taken him two weeks to even get to it. The first night he saw the Racket play was about the fourth time he stepped foot in the Third Rail, still licking his wounds after his messy exit from the Gunners. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Deacon for the whole set. And then Deacon had come out to the bar, sitting halfway around it, and MacCready bought him a drink he’d sent over through the bartender. Deacon had looked up at him, still wearing the sunglasses, too hard to read. He looked long enough that MacCready figured it was a thanks-but-no-thanks deal, but then he’d smiled, and nodded, and carried it over. And they talked. They talked until last call. And the next night, they did it again. And the one after that. Until one slow Monday night, Deacon gave him the kind of smile meant to start something. 

“It can’t be more than this,” Deacon had said, his fingers already plucking at the buttons of MacCready’s shirt before MacCready could fumble the lock on his door closed. 

“Suits me fine,” MacCready had said, kissing his way down Deacon’s jaw. 

Famous last words.

It became a routine. They fell into bed the way some people tumble downhill: too fast, too hard, and not sure where they’re going to land. Not sure how to stop. Even the whole Railroad thing hadn’t managed that until, well… until it did.

Deacon hadn’t even brought it up until a couple months in. Until he started staying later and later, and the goodnight kisses got longer and longer, and MacCready found himself forgetting where the boundaries were even supposed to start. Then Deacon had sat himself up against MacCready’s headboard with the sheets tangled around his thighs and said, “I think there’s something you should know about me.” 

MacCready had propped his head up on his fist and said, “Okay,” and listened to a story he didn’t believe, at first. It sounded like all the other bullshit stories Deacon spun him any time MacCready tried to ask where he was from, or what he did on his nights off, or what his full name was. He stopped asking, after a while, telling himself it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know who Deacon was. It wasn’t exactly like MacCready had a wholesome story of his own to tell, and it wasn’t like they were taking a run at the altar, here. They had their laughs and they had their drinks and they always went back to MacCready’s stuffy shoebox of an apartment, and that was all it needed to be.

So he’d laughed that night, when Deacon told him he worked with some shadow organization saving synths. Sure, people liked to whisper about the Institute; urban legends about people disappearing and getting replaced with mechanical men made the rounds through the back alleys at least once a month. They freaked him out a little, if he was being honest, but it’s not like they were _real_. So MacCready laughed, and waited for Deacon to laugh with him, and sobered quickly when he didn’t. 

“You can’t be serious.”

“Usually, you’d be right.” Deacon had frowned down at his hands. “But I figured you should know, if we’re doing this. That I’m — yeah. I’m in danger pretty much all the time, and… and being around me too much might make it… contagious.”

The story explained the name, and the wig and the sunglasses schtick, and the dodge-and-evade maneuvers about his past. Still, MacCready didn’t _really_ believe it until he met Valentine, maybe another month later. And hadn’t that been a surprise, when the office door opened on a man with glowing yellow eyes and gray, peeling skin stretched over bits of steel. 

He hadn’t known that it wasn’t just Deacon, either. The story was short, and patchy, and told him only enough that he figured it was really just some off-the-book, back room jobs Deacon did on his off hours. Let him call it what he wants. 

At the time he’d just smirked and said, “All the time, huh? That’s why you’re up on stage in the most popular bar in town every other night?”

Deacon had smirked back. “You’d be surprised how effective it is to hide in plain sight.” Then the smirk had faded. “I’m… taking a lot on faith, here. That you’ll keep this, you know, quiet.”

“Who’d believe me, anyway?” MacCready had shrugged. “I’m actually kind of trying to keep a low profile myself.” 

“You are?”

Fair was fair. MacCready told him about the Gunners in return. It wasn’t long after that that Winlock and Barnes paid him a visit, anyway. 

The music shifts down a key, and Drummer Boy rests his sticks. A few couples leave the dance floor. A few shift closer. He watches a dark-skinned man in a light blue suit pull the man in his arms to his chest and rest his chin over his shoulder, closing his eyes. Deacon’s voice slides out smooth and somber through the microphone around words that dig under MacCready’s ribs. MacCready looks away, finally remembering his whiskey. The ice has started to melt. 

He held Deacon like that the night he and Hancock’s men dumped Winlock and Barnes in the river. He’d called him up and asked him over, his voice cracking around the words. And Deacon had come. He’d stepped into MacCready’s arms like he belonged there. Let MacCready kiss every inch of his skin as he spread him out on the bed. Let MacCready fall asleep in his arms. Let him wake up there.

In the morning, stroking Deacon’s chest while Deacon carded his fingers through MacCready’s hair, MacCready told him about Duncan. About Lucy. About all the things that brought him to Diamond City. And Deacon listened. 

That was about the time MacCready stopped pretending he wasn’t falling in love. And, now that he thinks about it, it was about the time Deacon started wearing that red rose.

He swallows watered-down whiskey around the lump in his throat. And he waits out the next number, and the next, until the curtain closes. And then he leaves what’s left of the whiskey on the napkin, grabs his hat, and goes to the stage door at the side of the ballroom. 

A stagehand tries to stop him. “Excuse me, sir, you can’t be—”

“It’s all right, honey.” Magnolia leans around the doorway and smiles her silky smile. “He’s with me.”

“Oh, yes ma’am, sorry ma’am—”

She tugs MacCready past the door by his elbow, past the curtain rigging and a few leaning wooden pieces, to a hallway tighter than McDonough’s purse strings. She pats his arm and leaves him there. “Same door as always.”

She’s gone before he can thank her. He slips down to the third door, the one that’s got a plus sign with rays jutting out around it painted on the front, instead of a star. MacCready raises his arm three times before he gets the courage to knock. 

“S’open.” 

The dressing room is hardly bigger than a closet, and exactly the way he remembers it. A costume rack hunches behind the door on one side, a dressing table on the other. Just enough room for two people to stand. Deacon’s sitting at the dressing table, wig on a dummy head in front of him, mopping the sweat from his forehead. His sunglasses sit on the table next to the wig. MacCready pulls his hat off, and meets Deacon’s eyes in the mirror. 

Deacon freezes. His eyes go wide, and he swings around in his chair, like he doesn’t trust them. 

“Bobby?”

Oh. He hasn’t heard that nickname in so long. 

“Hey, Deacon.” 

MacCready hovers in the doorway as Deacon stands. He’d pulled off the blazer and left it on the back of his chair. His bowtie sits loose on either side of his collar. Sweat still clings to his temples, and the hollow of his throat. He’d looked good on stage. He looks better now. 

“What… what are you doing here?” Deacon says, too stunned to keep it casual. 

“I, um—”

He’d had a speech. He’d rehearsed it in the mirror. Said it over and over until he could do it without looking like he swallowed something sour. _I’m here on business, you’ll never believe it, but I’m—_

“I didn’t think—” Deacon starts, before MacCready can try, “I didn’t think I’d see you again. I figured — I mean, are you — are you here long?” 

It takes MacCready a moment to realize he means “are you in town long” and not “are you staying in the club awhile longer.” And that rips a memory out of the back of his head so sharp and clear he could choke on it, a memory of his own voice. _I’m leaving this town. I’m leaving and I’m never looking back._

_Come with me. Or don’t._

“I never — I never left.” His voice is little more than a croak as he says it, his tongue thick and clumsy in a way he can’t blame on a whiskey and a half. 

“You said…” The words die off.

MacCready nods anyway. “I know.” 

He said a lot of things. He said “never” and he said “don’t” and he said “goodbye.” And he got in a cab that took him to the Diamond City Central train station. He’d stood on the sidewalk letting the rain pelt his suitcase and his hat for almost half an hour. And then he’d walked twenty blocks to knock on Nick Valentine’s door at ten minutes to midnight and said, “You offered me a job. That offer still good?” 

“I’m, uh, I’m a P. I. now,” MacCready says, to fill the silence. Someone passes behind him in the hall, and he steps a little further in the door to let them by. 

Deacon says, “Here, just come in,” and pushes the door closed when he does. MacCready leans his shoulder into the wall. Deacon sits on the corner of the dressing table and folds his arms. “Must have wax in my ears. Thought I heard you say you’re a private dick.”

MacCready fights the smile and loses. “I’m a pretty public dick. But I’m a private investigator.” 

Deacon’s turn to smile, ducking his head a little to the side. It’s bittersweet, to know they can still make each other laugh. 

“I work with Nick Valentine,” MacCready says. His smile fades a little and he looks down. “I… I kept my promise.” 

He’d made it to Duncan, first. Kissing his little fist where it lay on a hospital bed, right below the blue boil spanning the back of his wrist. He’d made it again to Deacon in his own bed, in the low light of the first morning he hadn’t woken up alone. He’d promised to clean up his act. He’d promised to do better. To _be_ better. 

“MacCready,” Deacon says softly. He stands and steps a little closer. And as he moves, MacCready’s eyes snag on the array of clutter on the dressing table behind him. There, tucked among the brushes and powders, the compacts and cologne, he sees the faded green paint of a little wooden soldier. Lucy’s wooden soldier. The one he’d given Deacon when he made that promise.

The one Deacon had tried to give him back. 

Deacon only had it two weeks, maybe three, before the night he showed up at MacCready’s door on his own. He’d kissed him before MacCready could get all the way through “hello.” He’d kissed him like it was going to be the last time. Because it was.

They were both still panting when Deacon sat up on the edge of the bed. He’d faced the window, though the blinds were drawn. And with the bronze light of the sunset striping his thighs, he’d said, “We have to stop.”

“What?” MacCready sat up immediately, confused, a pit opening up in stomach. “What do you mean?”

The Institute had found the Railroad’s headquarters. It was a massacre. Deacon barely escaped with his life. “Most of the Racket made it, except Tommy—”

“What? Wait, the Racket — the _Racket_ is—?”

Deacon had just nodded. All those people MacCready had been sharing drinks with, bumping into backstage — _all_ of them were in on this thing? 

“We’re not gonna cancel the shows. Glory and I think that’ll look suspicious, if we pull out. I don’t know if they’ve made us, though. I took a risk even coming here, but I couldn’t—” He’d swallowed, turning his head. Not enough to look MacCready in the eye. “This has to be it. We’re playing with fire. I’m not going to let you get burned.”

“I can take a little heat,” MacCready had said. “Come on, after everything I went through with the Gunners—”

“This isn’t the Gunners, MacCready,” Deacon had said. “The Gunners can’t even fathom the things the Institute can do. It’s too dangerous. If they figure out where I am, _who_ I am, and want a way to get to me? They won’t come to the club. They’ll come after you. I can’t let that happen.” 

“So let’s go.” 

It was out before he thought it through. But once it was, it startled him how little he wanted to take it back. 

“What?” 

“Let’s go. You and me, we’ll — we’ll pack up, go somewhere they can’t reach.”

Deacon had looked so sad. “There isn’t anywhere they can’t reach, Bobby.” 

“We’ll be careful. We’ll keep to ourselves. Let’s just go, we can do this.” 

“No, we can’t.” Deacon wouldn’t look at him as he stood. “I can’t. I can’t leave my — the Railroad, the Racket, they’re like family to me.”

“And I’m not?” Even now, MacCready hates thinking of how bitter he sounded. 

Deacon’s face had crumpled. “Don’t do that. Don’t ask me to choose.” 

“Sounds like you already did.” 

But MacCready couldn’t leave it there. He showed up at the Third Rail the next night, drinking until he was drunk. And then he pounded on Deacon’s door.

He can’t even remember everything he said. Stupid, angry things. But he remembers the ultimatum. “Come with me. Or don’t.” And Deacon had looked at him like MacCready was crushing his heart with his bare hands. He’d grabbed the soldier off the table and tried to hand it back. MacCready had slammed the door in his face. 

At the time, he’d thought, _I hope it twists the knife._ Days later, he’d thought, _I hope it makes him remember._ And now he looks at it and thinks, _I hope he doesn’t let it go._

He looks up from the soldier to find Deacon’s followed his gaze. MacCready can already see his brow bending in, and the slant of his mouth. It hurts all over again. And god, he can’t do it. He can’t be here. 

“I shouldn’t have come,” he says. He takes a few steps toward the door. 

“Why did you?” Deacon says, stopping him in place.

MacCready stares at the doorknob. “Valentine… we have a case. A kidnapping. He wants your help.” 

“All right, but he’s not here.”

“He had another lead to work on.” 

“One you couldn’t handle?”

“Deacon, what do you want me to say?” MacCready finally looks up. “I came here on business, I—”

Deacon stands. He steps closer. MacCready puts one hand on the doorknob. Deacon’s eyes flick down to it, then back up. He won’t stop him. MacCready knows it. He didn’t stop him the first time. Deacon watches him, lips parting around a shaky breath. 

MacCready reaches for the door’s lock, and turns it until it bolts. Deacon wets his lips. 

“Bobby, I—”

MacCready catches his mouth open around the vowel, his hand flying up from the door handle to cup Deacon’s jaw. It’s a wet mess of a kiss, too desperate to be good, too raw to be anything else. Deacon gasps in a breath around MacCready’s lips and tilts his head, slotting their mouths together again. This time, it’s perfect. This time, they fit together, the way they always did. Like they’d never been broken.

They need to talk. They need to talk a lot. This isn’t apology enough. He can’t bury his regrets in Deacon’s skin. There’s some part of MacCready that knows this, and knows when this stops, Deacon might still say no. But MacCready isn’t asking him to run away, this time. He’s asking him not to go anywhere at all.

Deacon wraps an arm around his waist, pulling him in to deepen the kiss. MacCready makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and fists his hand in the front of Deacon’s shirt. His thumb presses in under the hinge of Deacon’s jaw as Deacon’s teeth scrape the underside of his lip. 

Then the doorknob rattles a little, startling them out of the kiss. Two short knocks follow, after that. 

“Hey, D-Man.” Glory’s voice, right against the door. “You coming out for drinks, or what?” 

“Gimme five,” Deacon calls, his eyes on MacCready’s lips as he says it. 

MacCready’s fist loosens, and he winces a little when he sees the wrinkles he’s crumpled into Deacon’s shirt. Deacon just chuckles when he looks down, and slides his hands to rest on MacCready’s hips. 

“It’s all right, that’s what the jacket’s for.” His smile fades a little. “Listen, I’m back on in twenty, but I—” He purses his lips. “Don’t go anywhere?” 

MacCready smooths a hand over Deacon’s shirt and then steps back. He meets Deacon’s gaze and whispers, “I’ll be waiting.” 

Slowly, Deacon smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The Gunners are meant to be kind of mafia-adjacent, rather than military. Felt like it might fit the setting a little better.  
> 2) Didn't really find a natural place to put it in since MacCready's in a coat the whole time, but I imagined him in the outfit I used for the party scene in A Line in the Sand: tight gray slacks, black vest, white button-up.  
> 3) Preston and Anthony (my sole survivor) have a tiny hidden cameo in this, kudos if you picked it out. (As you will see in Part 2, there is a sole survivor family but I leave them ambiguous, so it's not technically Anthony and his family.)  
> 4) I didn't really have to go into it but since this is not post-apocalypse, technically all ghouls would be human. But I left the description ambiguous if you want to keep picturing them as ghouls, maybe there's another reason. Doesn't really affect the story, just acknowledging the worldbuilding situation.
> 
> Part 2 coming soon! It was inspired by another Fluffy February prompt so I'll post it on that day, even though it kinda veered too far to count for it. In the meantime, you can find me on tumblr @electricshoebox or twitter @galaxiesgone.


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